Lab 2: Overview

Measuring Risk

Part 1: Mapping Risk in QGIS

Allocation of public health resources should be based on objective assessments of health status, burden of disease, and risk of injury/death.

Rates of deaths have been used to measure burden/risk and to compare the impact of diseases. Standardized mortality rate (SMR), also known as Relative Risk or Exccess Risk are useful meausures of relative risk.

In this lab, we will explore the risk of dying of COVID-19 across Modified Zip Code Tabulation Areas (MODZCTA) in New York City, 2020 - 2021.

The Data and geographies for this can be found in the NYC Health Department’s Website. The files you need, however, are in the Lab 2 folder.

Steps:

• Open data-by-modzcta.csv and MODZCTA.shp in QGIs
• Make a join based on a common ID
• Calculate the rate and excess risk estimates
• Create small multiples map to present rate of death and excess risk of death side by side.

See Lab 2, Part 1 video for detailed instructions.

The final product of part 1:

Part 2: Mapping Risk in R

In part 2 of the lab, we will repeat the steps outlined above, but this time, using the sf, tidyverse and tmap packages.

See Lab 2, Part 2 video for detailed instructions.

The final product of part 2:

Assignment 2

Submit the finished maps for Part 1 and 2 of this lab